XOXO

              I was in my classroom. Sitting almost at the centre of the room. My teacher was teaching something but I dint understand what she was teaching. I was hearing what she was saying but I couldn’t listen. My classmates were listening to her. It was a perfectly normal day. Nobody would have imagined how wrong that day could go.

I was watching the teacher teach so dramatically. Her hands were swinging from one side to another. Her head was nodding with the rhythm of her hands. Her eyes were rolling with the rhythm of her head. I turned around and saw all the students’ eyes were fixed on my teacher. Something was weird about her. Once again I turned back to my teacher. She wasn’t teaching dramatically now. Actually she was not teaching at all. She was standing perfectly still. Her eyes were staring directly into mine. There was no expression on her face. I felt that something is wrong with me. Maybe that’s why she was looking at me. I turned around and saw everyone in the class looking at me with the same dead expression on their face. I was scared. I saw the teacher’s face again. There was a small smile at the corner of her lips. Then I noticed that there was nobody in the room except for me and her. I closed my eyes because everything I was seeing changed every second. I was confused and completely scared.

            
               I opened my eyes. I was in the classroom but now I was sitting in the first row. She was standing right in front of me. Her eyes were still fixed into mine. Now there was a wider smile on her face. I looked down and saw her having a knife in her hand. I pushed the table in front me over her and started running from that room. She immediately pushed the table away and started chasing me. I was running in the corridors. She was chasing right behind me. She was screaming madly and chasing me. My heart was beating so fast. I dint have a single second to think about what was going on at that moment. All I knew was to keep running. My body automatically did that. But I reached the end of the corridor. There were stairs going down. I wanted to climb down it but I came there running in such a speed that I fell off the stairs. I was rolling down the stairs. I was screaming in pain and fear. She was standing in the top corridor and laughing like a ghost. My eyes weren’t seeing anything now. But I could hear myself screaming at the top of my voice.

              
                 Next second I opened my eyes. Everything was completely dark. I was still screaming but I couldn’t hear my voice. I could feel my mouth screaming but there was no noise. I could feel the bed in which I was lying but I couldn’t see a thing. I stopped screaming. I started wondering where I was. Although it was utterly dark, I could figure out few things. One, I was lying on a bed. Two, there was a wall to my left. That was my hostel room. I knew it was the bed I slept few hours before. I must have dreamt everything.  I knew the switch board was only an arm’s length above my head. I could just lift myself a bit and switch on the lights. I got up a bit and I heard my door banging. A female voice was asking me to open the door. I straightened myself against the wall and I was still on my bed. I couldn’t reach the switchboard because it was next to the door and the voice was coming from that direction.

             
             At that moment, something struck my mind. That was my mother’s voice. It’s a usual thing. Every time I used to have a bad dream, I would scream and my mother would come and sleep in my room. That was my mother at the door. I called out “amma”. Now I heard my own voice in my ears. Then I heard my mother’s voice outside the door asking me to open it. I reached out towards the door. Then I realized I was in my hostel room, more than thousand miles away from my home. A single thought made me bounce back to the wall in a second. In the next second, the voice outside changed. It was louder and it was banging my door harder. I couldn’t see anything in the pitch darkness and the voice made my heart skip every second beat. Then everything went silent. Next moment, the window in front of me burst open and the moon light splashed inside my room like a car headlight. She burst inside my room. I saw her eyes and closed mine.

            
                I was screaming at the top of my voice. But this time I could hear my own screaming. I could feel everything – the noise of my screaming, the fear which was making my whole body shiver. I opened my eyes. It was again pitch dark. I was lying on my bed. I could feel the wall against my left hand. This time I dint wait to think. I reached out and switched on the lights. I felt like I have finished a hundred meter race and I could start breathing then.  Finally my eyes could see something real. I saw my room. I was panting on my bed. I told myself everything was just a dream. It actually was just a dream. It took me few minutes to calm myself down. Then I lied down. I dint dare to switch off the lights. I closed my eyes. I could feel the warmth of the light on my eye lids. But the rest of my body became suddenly cold. Then I felt something really cold hit my forehead. Everything then came back to normal temperature. I was completely aware of myself but I dint open my eyes. I dint know when I slept after that, that night.